Living under surveillance: to put it bluntly, the technology that enables the surveillance state is here to stay. Now, how do we keep it from controlling us?

New American, The, Oct 29, 2007 by Wilton D. Alston

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We live in a surveillance society. It is pointless to talk about surveillance society in the future tense. In all the rich countries of the world everyday life is suffused with surveillance encounters, not merely from dawn to dusk but 24/7. Some encounters obtrude into the routine, like when we get a ticket for running a red light when no one was around but the camera. But the majority are now just part of the fabric of daily life. Unremarkable.

--"Report on the Surveillance Society" Surveillance Studies Network, 2006

Everyone on the political spectrum--from free-market anarchists to totalitarians--has some vision of what is meant by the phrase, "surveillance society." Is the idea of a surveillance society in today's world "unremarkable?" Consider:

* The UK is now the world's most watched country, having upwards of five million closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras keeping a watchful eye on the public, with the average citizen being caught on camera around 300 times per day.

* Upwards of 1.5 million automobiles can now be tracked and located anywhere in the United States--or in fact anywhere on Earth--using OnStar, General Motor's onboard car-to-mobile-phone-network communications system.

* Telecom giant AT&T has allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to set up what could only be called a "spy room" on AT&T property to make routine monitoring of phone calls easier.

* Marijuana farmers in Wisconsin now must fear not only conventional law enforcement methods, but also the Internet. Satellite images from Google Earth--yes that Google Earth--have been used to locate farms and arrest farmers.

* The trend of one-to-one marketing has driven businesses to be more aggressive in both discovering and remembering facts about their customers. Firms like Donnelly Marketing, which keeps dossiers on over 90 percent of American households, collect and manage massive files regarding each family's preferences in everything from pets to politics.

* Face-recognition software was successfully tested during Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa, Florida, with approximately 100,000 faces being scanned and identified. (Several law-breakers--mostly ticket scalpers--were noticed, but no arrests were made, since it was just a "dry run"!)

* The FBI, apparently unsatisfied with their success using data mining, is issuing so many National Security Letters (NSLs)--administrative subpoenas that require no probable cause while simultaneously precluding the recipient from ever disclosing that the letter was issued--that they plan to automate the process of tracking them.

Clearly this presents a challenge to a free society. That challenge stems from the imbalance in power between the state and the people where surveillance is concerned. That imbalance must be addressed if freedom is to be maintained.

Conflicting Views

The odds are pretty good that most people, when asked what that term means, would think of some image from the Will Smith movie, Enemy of the State, in which an innocent man is pursued relentlessly by a federal security apparatus employing the latest high-tech surveillance gadgetry. Many would agree, also, with the movie's tagline, "It's not paranoia if they really are after you."

It does seem these days that "they" really are after "us." The question is not whether or not a surveillance society will occur, particularly in Western societies like the United States and the United Kingdom. That horse is out of sight already.

The question is more what the unavoidable ubiquity of surveillance will mean to the individual and the collective. The question is how society should deal--how society will deal--with routine, widespread, nearly constant surveillance, not just by government but by private entities as well, now that surveillance technology is quite clearly not only common but also here to stay.

But how much surveillance is too much? Such questions amount to quibbling over price. No one can prevent the proliferation of surveillance tech, and no one can preclude "bad people," including some agents of the State, from also having it. That much is certain. Can freedom and privacy coexist with the surveillance society? Absolutely. However, one cannot determine the proper amount of surveillance by the government if one has already ceded the entire decision to that government.

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Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

So far, Americans seem to favor surveillance over privacy. For example, a recent survey by ABC News found that most Americans favor increased use of police surveillance cameras to "fight crime." This, despite the fact that precious little data illustrates that cameras do anything to reduce crime. Indeed, despite the lack of real security benefits, publication of a single story illustrating that a heinous killer was caught via video can justify almost any infringement upon the privacy of ordinary citizens.

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Security expert Bruce Schneier calls this effect, within the realm of surveillance psychology, the "availability heuristic." Most people would rather all their deepest secrets be posted on the Internet tomorrow than have a psychopathic serial killer escape capture today, assuming that's the trade-off. Of course, it's not quite that simple. Today's "I've got nothing to hide" can turn into tomorrow's "but I didn't know that was against the law!" That's particularly the case when a government moves in the direction of imposing more and more laws and regulations on its citizens--denying the right to keep and bear arms, for instance.